Eris O'Brien: historian and scholar.
Johnston, Elizabeth
In Cassocks in the Wilderness, an account by Chris Geraghty of his time as a junior seminarian at St Columba's College in Springwood, the author reflects on the portraits of 'episcopal old boys' in a corridor at St Columba's: I used to smile at the photograph of Archbishop Eris O'Brien as I processed slowly down the passage to chapel. In the photograph, he appeared educated, with a heavy book open in front of him. He looked so urbane, sophisticated and very handsome. Eris had been my parish priest at Neutral Bay from my earliest memories. I had served at his mass often in the parish church, on occasions reminding him when he lost concentration and omitted the words of consecration, or began all over again when he was supposed to be rattling through the last gospel. He was always late for the second weekday mass at 7.15 am officially, but no one complained. We knew he used to stay up late, reading, preparing lectures in Australian History for students at Sydney University, poring over historical sources from the days of Father Therry and the establishment of the Catholic Church in Australia. All Neutral Bay loved this man who later became a bishop, then archbishop. He was not typical of the Sydney clergy who in general were muscular, practical, tougher, working-class men. He had no faults we could see. From primary school, my life was influenced by and modelled on him. As I sauntered by, I would glance with respect, sometimes feeling homesick just looking at his portrait. (1)
In his long and distinguished life and career, Eris O'Brien is remembered by many people, for many things. He was a parish priest and an archbishop, a professional historian and academic, an amateur poet, dramatist and composer, a confidant of diplomats and prime ministers and a publican's son, only two generations removed from illiteracy. Truly, in the words of the Melbourne Advocate, a 'brilliant many-sided Australian priest'. (2)
In an article of this length, it would not be possible to do justice to the full breadth and depth of O'Brien's achievements. Instead, what I wish to do is give an outline of his work as a scholar and historian, looking briefly at his early years as they contributed to his education and first steps in his scholarly, field, and his subsequent intellectual flowering that produced his greatest scholarly achievements.
What is perhaps surprising, for a scholar of his later accomplishment, is that Eris O'Brien came from a decidedly un-academic background. O'Brien's paternal grandparents--Thomas O'Brien and Alan Kelly--were Irish Catholic emigrants, at the bottom of the colonial hierarchy. Married in April 1852, at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, they signed the marriage register with a cross, both presumably unable to read or write (not unusual for the times). Thomas and Ann settled in the Marulan district near Goulburn and had at least ten children. One of these, Terence, was bona in 1865.
It is said that the Catholic Irish settlers in Australia wanted one of the three 'Ps' for their sons--that they be priests, policemen or publicans. I don't know what careers the rest of the O'Brien children followed, but it seems fitting that Terence became a policeman, and later a publican, and his older son Eris became a priest.
Eris was born in Condobolin, NSW on 29 September, 1895, the feast of St Michael. Though christened Erisford Norman, his confirmation name was Michael, and he came to be called Eris Michael O'Brien. (3) In 1907 the family moved to the Sydney suburb of Chatswood, where Terence was appointed senior constable. Eris attended St Aloysius' College at Milson's Point, starting in the commercial stream but rapidly moving to the academic. He was academically very able, and tended to share prizes with Cyril Ritchard, the future Australian actor. In 1913 he began as a junior seminarian at St Columba's in Springwood, and was ordained from St Patrick's College Manly in 1918.
Early writings
While at Manly, O'Brien started serious writing. He transcribed the Father John Therry letters that were at Manly: wrote articles on Symbolism; published in Austral Light in 1918: wrote a booklet, Cardinal Manning, the Orphan's Friend and the Workman's Champion, published by the Australian Catholic Truth Society in 1917: and also wrote articles for the Catholic Press. These were, on the whole, fairly conventional and somewhat pious works, of a familiar genre.
Then, in 1920, at the age of twenty-five, following a brief period as an assistant priest, O'Brien was appointed to the staff at St Patrick's Seminary. His principal task was to write a life of Father Therry, which was published in 1922 as The Life and Letters of Archpriest John Joseph Therry. It was an examination of the man who in 1820 was the first officially appointed priest to the young convict colons; This book was well received, not only by the Catholic population but by the secular press as well, and later re-published under the title The Foundation of Catholicism in Australia. His next book, The Dawn of Catholicism in Australia, was initially written under the title Jeremiah Francis O'Flynn as a series of articles in the Australasian Catholic Record. This is an account of the priest who, before Father Therry, arrived in the colony without permission and was expelled by Governor Macquarie. Both these books were written in a fairly uncritical manner, and it may be supposed that O'Brien knew that he was writing for a popular, non-academic audience. Additionally, it is doubtful that he had ever been exposed to history scholarship.
As a priest of the Sydney Archdiocese, with all the normal responsibilities towards his pastoral duties and superiors, O'Brien naturally had to consider his scholarly life as an adjunct to his other duties. The attitude of his religious superiors to this part of his work ranged from genuine encouragement and support to attempts to control the direction of his research. This was to lead to conflict between the bishops' expectations and O'Brien's wishes. For much of the writing time of his first two books O'Brien was on the professorial staff of the two seminaries that had been founded in New South Wales by Cardinal Moran and there is no doubt that O'Brien's writing was officially encouraged. It is apparent that tensions were generated in others by this seemingly favourable treatment. When he wrote to Archbishop Kelly in 1924 about the Mass for St Mary Magdalene that he had composed in collaboration with C.R. Kelly, O'Brien said: I wish to assure Your Grace that not even one line of it was written at Springwood, it was written whenever time could be spared at Rose Bay--and most frequently, whilst travelling by trams. My reason for explaining this to Your Grace, is lest anyone should say later-as some said unjustly of the Therry book--that I spent my time on these matters when I should have attended to the work in hand. (4)
By his mid-thirties, O'Brien seemed still to be seeking the proper outlet for his considerable intellectual abilities. In addition to his books, articles and Mass setting, he had attempted a national anthem, written and produced The Hostage ('a miracle play' partly in blank verse about the leaving of the Blessed Sacrament in the Davis cottage by Father Jeremiah O'Flynn), painted watercolours, translated religious articles from French for publication and been appointed as lecturer in history at St John's College at the University of Sydney. In 1931 he had even been appointed the first editor of the Catholic School Paper. And all this while he fulfilled all the duties of an assistant, and later, parish priest at Surry Hills, Waterloo, Rose Bay, Hurstville and Bankstown. The warmth and pastoral care he brought to his priesthood can perhaps be seen in the number of children in the various parishes where he ministered who were given the name Eris.
The Foundation of Australia
The next part of his life is pivotal to understanding Eris O'Brien. It is the story of how he did not write a life of Cardinal Moran, but instead acquired historical scholarship and wrote The Foundation of Australia?
The centenary of the birth of Cardinal Moran occurred in 1930. The bishops of Australia were anxious that his biography should be written before all those who knew him had died. The bishops commissioned Dr Maurice O'Reilly, the wellknown rector of St John's College at the University of Sydney, to write the life. O'Reilly accepted the commission and spent almost a year in Europe, presumably in both Ireland mad Rome, assembling details of Cardinal Moran's family and early life.
On 22 January 1934, from Bankstown where he was bv then parish priest, O'Brien wrote to Archbishop Kelly applying for leave for three years to study at the Catholic University at Louvain in Belgium for a doctorate in Social Science and Political Economy. It seems that his planned doctoral thesis title was 'the Economic and Social effects of Convict colonization in Australia'. Although he applied for financial assistance by the way of various available bursaries from the Archbishop, he also indicated that he would be willing to pay the expenses of the course himself. (6) His parents had both died by this time, and perhaps there was an inheritance that allowed him some financial independence.
However, on 25 September 1933 Dr Mauriee O'Reilly had died. It was understood by the bishops that O'Reilly had been well advanced on his life of Moran and in April 1934 O'Brien received a letter stating that the bishops wished to appoint him as the new Moran biographer. They suggested that he should postpone his departure to Louvain for a year and write the Moran life in that time. They requested 'an early reply ... if you are unwilling to accept the task give us your reasons for declining and we will duly consider them'. His first reply, in a very careful letter, was to accept the invitation but, seeing that it was such an enormous task to complete in a year, asked that an administrator be appointed to Bankstown during that period so he could work uninterrupted.
Then, on 28 April, O'Brien made a different proposal. He had already told the bishops that 'this Life is quite unwritten, except for a personal preface and some fragments of narrative'. He went on to say that O'Reilly's research notes 'consist mainly in excerpts from letters of Dr Moran to Dr Kirby in the Irish College; but as the source of these are unidentified the notes become quite useless to any biographer, other than Dr O'Reilly, with whom the necessary knowledge died'. Much work in Ireland and Rome was needed for the biography and he now suggested that he go to Louvain to study as planned. During the long vacations he would collect material in Rome and Ireland and, soon after his return, publish a complete life of the cardinal, of about five hundred pages. This proposal was agreed to within the week. He was formally commissioned to write the life of Cardinal Moran and the direction was made that 'you should take the Cardinal's Life or some aspect of it for your History thesis at Louvain'. To help with expenses, various amounts of money were raised separately by appeal from both the bishops and priests, and he left Sydney in September 1934--with background material for the Moran book including some of Dr O'Reilly's notes and also with notes and reference books for a history of the early penal colonisation in Australia.
At that time a doctorate in Social Science from Louvain required a published thesis of at least two hundred pages written after a minimum of twelve months' research. O'Brien was planning to write two books. The first was 'The Social and Political Influences of the Australian Catholic Church on the Abolition of the System of Convict Transportation', (7) the projected economic history of penal colonisation for which he had already done some research before he left Australia. The second was the life of Moran. His professors at Louvain did suggest that the Moran life could be submitted for a doctorate if he emphasized the social and political side but O'Brien thought that would spoil it, so rejected the idea. (8) He was then told that it was impossible for him to write two books and he was directed by his supervisors to write the Moran book as' it was more important than the academic degree', particularly as he had a definite commission from the New South Wales bishops. The quashing of his original plans must have been a very great disappointment but, in an endeavor to still gain some formal standing from his time in Louvain, he enrolled for a Licentiate in Social Science. He was allowed to compress the period required to one year by doing two years' subjects in one, writing an unpublished thesis (on the Australian immigration laws and their restrictions) and attending some practical courses. In his letters back to Sydney O'Brien appears to console himself with the idea that if he did much of the work on his own subject he could prepare it after he returned home and present it for a doctorate at a later date. Meanwhile at the direction of his Louvain supervisors he was taking courses in the history faculty to prepare himself to write the Moran life. In a letter to his friend Father Edmund O'Donnell, who was also Archbishop Kelly's secretary, he said that 'they have very modern ideas here of historical writing. Dr Meyer wants me to write Moran's Life completely in my own words, not quoting long letters in the text, but putting the more important letters in an appendix'. This was a great contrast to the way he wrote the Therry book.
It is unclear exactly what O'Brien's priorities were at this time. Even though the letters he was writing to O'Donnell at St Mary's Cathedral protested his desire to complete the Moran book, it is obvious that he was proceeding with work on his own interest, which was to become The Foundation of Australia. It must be assumed that O'Brien endeavoured to convince the authorities in Australia that he should change back to his selected topic, for in February 1935 a cable was sent to him from Sydney saying that 'His Grace, the Coadjutor Archbishop, with the approval of the Diocese Council, advise you to concentrate on the Life of Cardinal Moran'.
By May 1935 O'Brien was writing back to Sydney that he had, with an enormous amount of work, completed and passed successfully all the required course work in six months and had 'gained much time' as well as his Licentiate. Initially the Louvain experience must have been difficult for him. He obviously felt much older than his fellow students and he referred to his 'elderly man's brain' and how he was like 'the old St Ignatius amongst the youth of Sorbonne'. (1) The courses, being in French, were challenging at first and there was the continual change in his final objective. But about this time O'Brien was accepted for a doctorate whose thesis title was The Social and Political Influences of Dr. Ullathorne in his campaign for the abolition of Transportation to Australia, 183840. This topic was mentioned only once in his correspondence and one does wonder if it was not a distraction to convince his superiors back in Australia (who were, after all, supporting him financially), that he was still working on Catholic history.
Soon the subject was to change again. Meanwhile he was also still working on the Moran book: he made trips to Rome to examine papers at the Irish College, though he was unable to gain access to others at Propaganda. He was proposing to finish it, after researching the Irish period, when he returned to Bankstown. (10) The title of the still Catholic thesis was now The Social and Political Influence of the Catholic Church during the early history of Australia, and its part in abolishing the transportation system. It was mentioned that his 'great work on Moran would continue after the doctorate was completed'.
A year later all had changed. O'Brien was writing from London where the bulk of his research was done. He was very tired and had had influenza and pleurisy, but the doctorate book, which was to be published as The Foundation of Australia (1786-1800)--A Study in English Criminal Practice and Penal Colonization in the Eighteenth Century, was close to being finished and was to be defended in November 1936. He said that the 'book will be big, I am afraid, but it has a great deal of new matter, all dealing with the foundation of Australia; so it will be opportune for the celebrations of the sesqui-centenary'. By now he had also enrolled for a Master of Arts degree at the National University of Ireland, his subject being the history of Catholic education in Australia from 1788 to 1840, and had also been offered the chance of an Oxford doctorate. (11) He had been doing further Moran research while attending some obligatory sessions at the University in Dublin. Perhaps inspired by academic life, he said he planned to submit the Moran Life for a D.Litt.
By the end of August 1936 O'Brien was writing again from London that the thesis for Louvain was finished. The English publishers Sheed & Ward were publishing a private edition in September for Louvain only and agreed to issue it for sale later. The Irish thesis was also completed and was to be defended in September. If approved he would be granted an M.A. in October but 'if they don't it won't matter, as it is the first part of a general history of education, which I hope to complete later on'. Meanwhile, he said, the Moran researches were continuing though he had rejected the chance of an Oxford degree. He said that he did not want to 'go in for the scholastic life; I was made for a parish priest, and I am happy at the job of parish affairs, especially when I can combine, as I have managed to do, some literary work in a small way'. (12) He was acquiring further honours, as he had been elected a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Historical Society, events which led him to say that he would gain useful contacts and perhaps would 'in some small way be creditable to our priesthood in Australia'. (13)
The Foundation of Australia was published by Sheed & Ward early in 1937, and O'Brien kept a very large envelope full of reviews, which were consistently excellent. All the major secular and Catholic Australasian papers carried reviews, as did the English Times, Tablet and The Listener, New York Sun and others. In 1950, following a visit to the London office of Sheed & Ward, O'Brien found that all unsold copies of his book had been lost during war-time bombing and that the publishers were reluctant to reprint. He convinced them to surrender the fights and Angus and Robertson brought out a new edition of The Foundation of Australia that same year. In time his history was a set text in three Australian universities. O'Brien, who had once said that 'a book is a very personal matter ... and the author of it has in it a deeper interest than he might have in a large fortune', (14) must have been gratified.
In Sydney literary circles
The return from Europe in 1937 saw a new phase in O'Brien's life. Increasingly he associated with those of intellectual, literary or artistic bent. Back in the 1920s he had become friendly with George Robertson, the publisher, and stalwart of the Presbyterian Church. At the invitation of O'Brien, in 1921 Robertson went to the Albion St presbytery to view the original There, documents on which O'Brien was basing The Life and Letters of Archpriest John Therry. While there the parish priest, Father Joe Cusack, showed him poems written by a fellow priest, Fr P. J. Hartigan. As is said, the rest is history, and years later Robertson wrote that 'two good books came out of that visit--two books that are really Christian in the widest sense'. (15) The first came to be known as The Foundation of Catholicism in Australia, the second was Around the Boree Log by 'John O'Brien'. But at that earlier period Eris O'Brien moved in largely Catholic circles. One friendship, which most obviously included an intellectual side, but was much more, was with Dr Charles Macdonald, who, with his family, were parishioners of O'Brien at Husrtville in the late 1920s. This became a lifelong friendship, the threads of which can be picked up throughout his life: there is a thank you to Charles Macdonald in the foreword of The Hostage, a poorly disguised use of his children in a story that O'Brien wrote as editor for the Catholic School Paper in 1931, and perturbation in 1962 when Macdonald did not approve of his sanctioning of the closure of the Goulburn Catholic schools, in what has become known as the 'Goulburn School Strike'.
However, on O'Brien's return to Sydney, and a new parish in Neutral Bay. there were frequent contacts with writers and others in the non-Catholic literary scene, and with those who were influential in Australian life. So there is correspondence and reports of meetings with people like Miles Franklin. Douglas and Margaret Stewart and the bibliophile Waiter Stone, who lived in Neutral Bay. Ruth Park, another Neutral Bay resident spoke of him in her autobiography. She called him a 'somewhat shy and modest man, perhaps lonely as many of the priestly intellectual are'. (16)
Another important person for a while was C. Harley Grattan, the New Deal intellectual and publicist who spent 1938 and 1939 in Australia. He wanted to get to know both Australians and Australia and associated a lot with writers. One result of this was a book edited by Harley Grattan and called Australia, to which O'Brien contributed a section called 'The Coming of the British to Australia'. Likewise an Oxford University Press publication. European Civilisation, Its Origin and Development. edited by Edward Eyre, had O'Brien contributing the section on Australia and New Zealand. Douglas Woodruff, the British Catholic intellectual and, by then, editor and reformer of The Tablet was the first contributor to this volume, and I would surmise the person who led to O'Brien's contribution. Foundation of Australia was dedicated to him and presumably he and O'Brien became friends in London.
Frank Sheed, the Australian-born publisher, and O'Brien were friends, and Sheed gave a public lecture at Neutral Bay when he visited Sydney. Dr H.V. Evatt, then Minister for External Affairs, was also, by this time, more than an acquaintance and visited the presbytery at Neutral Bay on several occasions. (17) Charles Moses, head of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, was another dinner guest. The Australian historian Malcolm Ellis was another friend--he and O'Brien lent books to each other and discussed them; Brian Peuton, the Daily Telegraph editor and writer can be included as an admirer. It was an increasingly eclectic list of contacts and one that almost certainly was much broader than for the average parish priest in urban Australia.
The range of acquaintances was maintained in his later years. After being initially suspicious of him, when they were both delegates to the 1948 United Nations session in Paris, O'Brien and Bishop Burgmann, the Anglican bishop of Canberra-Goulburn, learnt to like each other, (18) and both co-operated in obtaining state aid for schools in the Australian Capital Territory in the 1960s. That O'Brien and the Prime Minister Robert Menzies were also good friends probably helped. Menzies was reputed to say about this time that the Archbishop's palace was the only place in Canberra you could get a decent lunch. Each appeared to recognise in the other a fellow spirit and there are stories of them capping each other's Latin tags, swapping history anecdotes and generally being erudite together. Menzies said in his autobiography that Catholics 'had one of the best-informed, mildest-mannered and persuasive of advocates, Archbishop Eris O'Brien'. (19)
In Neutral Bay, where he was appointed parish priest in 1938, his impact was extraordinary--there are so many people who still talk of his charm, energy, intellect and empathy with everybody. He built a new church and was closely involved with absolutely every detail. The pencil windows behind the altar have a design of gum leaves--the Australian motif appears in other things like a monstrance also decorated with gum leaves. He commissioned the Czech sculptor Arthur Fleischmann, a war refugee, to sculpt the bronze figure for the large crucifix to hang over the altar of the new church. Fleischmann did several other sculptures for O'Brien and Neutral Bay, including a statue of St Therese of Lisieux. This was obviously controversial--it was terracotta coloured, and ha sermon notes at the time it was placed in the church Eris says 'it is an unusual statue--one different from those we are used to, and perhaps it will need growing accustomed to ... But it is a work of merit from an artistic point of view ... Also--it is deliberately carved to depict to the people a person of character.' Well, the people never did like it and after he left Neutral Bay it was painted white and, at some later stage, disappeared and no one remembers what happened to it.
Over the years O'Brien accumulated a large library--in the inventory, of his personal possessions from Neutral Bay in 1945 his books, pamphlets, research files and manuscripts numbered 6000 items. He bought original paintings and etchings: he owned forty-seven pictures at Neutral Bay. It is a matter of regret that, after his death, file library was not kept as an Australian history, reference collection, but was allowed to dissipate.
Academic in Sydney
A part of his life that appears to have been of great importance to O'Brien was his academic work. In the 1930s he was a lecturer in history at St John's College within the University of Sydney. In 1946 Maturing Clark, soon after being appointed a lecturer in history at Melbourne University, wrote to O'Brien, inviting him to visit and lecture to his classes. He did so lad there began what was to be a life-long friendship that certainly influenced Clark, and presumably vice-versa. In Clark's second volume of memoirs, The Quest for Grace, he talks of the 'rich experience' of meeting the author of the 'monumental' Foundation of Australia. Yet, it is difficult to reconcile this portrait of O'Brien with the man portrayed by others-thus Clark says 'reticence surrounded him with an air of mystery, an air intensified by the craggy cheeks and sorrowful eyes. It was as though he had lived through a sadness so deep that he dared not speak about it to anyone.'
Not too long after this visit to Melbourne, in February, 1947 O'Brien received an invitation from Stephen Roberts, Dean of Arts at the University of Sydney, inviting him to take up a lectureship in history there. There are several letters from O'Brien to Cardinal Gilroy stressing the importance to the Church that a priest should have this appointment which in a first letter is a part-time position and a full-time one in the second. He also tries to make it not terribly obvious that he had accepted the appointment before he consulted his superior. However Gilroy gave cordial approval mad O'Brien guaranteed that it would not interfere with his other duties. (20) He had a full programme--a sixty lecture course going well beyond his period and about 200 students. However he was timetabled for early evening and presumably hoped that ordinary duties would not be affected.
The lectures he gave are still in his papers and in his very first lecture he points out to the students that the opportunities to undertake research in the field of Australian history are much greater than in other fields. (21) Later that year he agreed to give a course of lectures in Pacific history to students at the School of Pacific Administration which was a creation of Dr Evatt and affiliated with the new research university in Canberra.
In January 1948 he was invited to lecture at Sydney University again--he said that the history department was anxious for him to lecture to 2nd and 3rd years and to honours students and had gone to some trouble to arrange a timetable to suit him. With Stephen Roberts having been appointed vice-chancellor on the sudden death of the previous incumbent and the enormous increase, post-war, in the number of students, the History Department was in great need of lecturers.
O'Brien accepted this invitation to lecture--but only for the first two terms. The importance of his university life showed in the address he gave at his consecration as bishop on 6 April 1948 when he said 'never did prospects of combining parochial and academic work look brighter than in February of this year when I had managed to liquidate the parish debt and when I felt happily settled in the second year of a lectureship at the University'. The Australian edition of The Foundation of Australia was published in 1950, and used as a text book in at least three Australian universities.
Episcopal life
O'Brien's appointment in 1948 as auxiliary bishop to Cardinal Gilroy in the Archdiocese of Sydney in a sense marked the end of the predominantly scholarly part of his life. From that time he was to function in a public arena-as bishop, archbishop, diplomat, administrator and adviser. Despite this, the life of Moran is a constant thread through O'Brien's later years. While parish priest and auxiliary bishop resident at Neutral Bay (1938-1953) he again had the Moran papers in his possession. There is evidence of letters that he wrote searching for further material, plus copies of documents he brought from Ireland--from the Dublin Archives alone he had made one hundred and fifty pages of notes in one period in September 1936. (22) But, in the end, it seems that he never made great inroads into the writing of the life. Among his papers stored at the Veech Library there is a sketchy plan of a biography, eleven different versions of a dedication of such a life to Dr O'Reilly saying, in one, that 'it should have been written by him ... he was my close and valued friend'. But there is little evidence of any large scale work on Moran. (23) In a talk on Moran he gave to the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1941 he said 'I find myself wondering whether Moran him self made his Australian office into an influential national position ... or whether it was file high office--and this great undeveloped continent--which made Moran into the leader I think he was'. (24) This was a development of ideas he had written to Bishop Dwyer immediately after his return from Europe in 1937 when, in reference to the proposed Moran book, he said 'I shall not lionise Moran, but the long period of his career deserves to be written. I can base our church history around his figure, which occasionally shone, usually glowed normally, and sometimes, it must be admitted. flickered very dimly. However, The Life and Times of P.A.M. will be only a simple narrative.' (25)
One suspects that O'Brien's heart and his intellect were not really committed to this book. He certainly manoeuvred out of writing it while at Louvain and I surmise that as he moved into leadership as bishop and archbishop not only did he no longer have time to complete a very large biography, or indeed to write a projected second volume of The Foundation of Australia, but he had also moved past writing what was solely Catholic history. Perhaps he questioned the relevance of yet another book whose purpose was to eulogise a Catholic figure without placing that person firmly in the Australian history of his times.
It is not the purpose of this article to review in detail the many things that O'Brien did in his years as auxiliary bishop and archbishop in Sydney, then as second archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn, an appointment he received in late 1953. In brief, notable events in this period include being part of the Australian delegation to the United Nations in both 1948 and 1950 and travelling to Vietnam with Cardinal Gilroy in 1955. He was a member of the Social Science Research Council of Australia and of the council of Canberra University College, was an active member of the Canberra Historical Society, gave radio addresses on the ABC, made many public speeches, mad much more. He also was a key figure in the so-called 'Goulburn school strike', pivotal in the movement to obtain state aid for religious schools in New South Wales. During his time in Canberra mad Goulburn O'Brien's health began to cause concern, particularly as he became increasingly forgetful and unable to grasp immediate detail, and also physically frailer. How much of this was obvious generally is hard to determine--some people I have spoken to state that he changed very, little, others quite the opposite. I think it fair to say that by the sixties his senior priests found him increasingly difficult and they were increasingly unhappy with his leadership--he was certainly reluctant to make decisions, though there does not seem to have been great dissatisfaction with decisions that were made. Yet even at this time his secretary Father Rheinberger said that he was 'forever a gentleman, forever wanting to be thoughtful and appreciative of other people'.
In 1962 he attended Vatican II in Rome with the rest of the Australian bishops. This event was a great strain for him; presumably the combination of travel, strange places, and so many strange people made it difficult. Still he visited London for a week and went to the British Museum where twenty-five years before he had spent nearly a year researching The Foundation of Australia. He said that the return visit was 'a happy experience. The men whom I had then known, had become senior and old; however, they remembered me, and about 10 of them took me to lunch, at the cheap cafeteria, where they and I had dined in those distant years'. (26)
When Eris O'Brien resigned as Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn in March 1967, Archbishop Guildford Young wrote to him. They were long standing friends but this was a formal letter of appreciation to a man whom Young viewed as having an influence beyond that of the ordinary. Australian churchman. He said: We priests of Australia owe a special debt of gratitude to you. When we, as a Catholic community, did not have any standing in the world of scholarship, generally speaking, you made the breakthrough and this at a time when there was no very great appreciation of the need and no great encouragement. (27)
O'Brien died 28 February, 1974, his scholarly breakthrough, realised over many years, was not to confine himself within the expected bounds of traditional Catholic learning, but to see that his talents, and indeed the public standing of the Church, were better served by embracing a wider intellectual world and leaving his mark upon it.
(1) Chris Geraghty. Cassocks in the Wilderness, Melbourne, 2001, pp 46-7.
(2) The Advocate, 20 May 1937, review of Foundation of Australia.
(3) It is believed that O'Brien was named for a racehorse. A horse called 'Eiridsforde won at Sandown, Victoria, on 7 September 1895, just before his birth.
(4) Sydney Archdiocesan Archives N1314, O'Brien E M.
(5) The sources for this section on the Moran history commission and the eventual writing of Foundation of Australia are, unless otherwise noted, the O'Brien papers, now at Veech Library. Strathfield, and Sydney Archdiocesan Archives.
(6) He had done much research on this topic and even travelled to Norfolk Island eleven years before. As Professor Bode Nairn said Jan O'Brien's obituary in the Canberra & District Historical Society Newsletter May 1974, 'his interest in early Australian history had widened from its Catholic aspects'.
(7) Diocese of Wagga Wagga Archives
(8) ibid
(9) ibid
(10) Archbishop Sheehan had a press notice about O'Brien's first degree and the proposed doctorate subject sent to the Catholic Press and Freeman's Journal on 8 May
(11) Diocese of Wagga Wagga Archives.
(12) ibid.
(13) Sydney Archdiocesan Archives. When, in 1950, O'Brien was elected to the Royal Australian Historical Society only he and Malcolm Ellis, the biographer of Macquarie, were fellows of both the Australian and British Societies.
(14) O'Brien papers, letter to Frank Sheed.
(15) A. W. Barker Dear Robertson, Letters to an Australian Publisher, Sydney, 1982, pp.106-7
(16) Ruth Park, Fishing in the Styx, Melbourne, 1993, pp.178-9.
(17) A Dalziell, Evatt The Enigma, Melbourne, 1967, p.57.
(18) Sydney Archdiocesan Archives.
(19) Robert Gordon Menzies, The Measure of the Years, Melbourne, 1970, p.92.
(20) Sydney Archdiocesan Archives.
(21) It can be surmised from these lecture notes, which are very full and much amended, that O'Brien was hoping they were the basis of another book.
(22) Diocese of Wagga Wagga Archives.
(23) A further sixty years on there is still no substantial life of Cardinal Moran.
(24) O'Brien papers, from manuscript of talk to RAHS.
(25) Diocese of Wagga Wagga Archives.
(26) O'Brien papers.
(27) Archdiocese of Hobart Archives.
Elizabeth Johnston is a past president of the ACHS and current Newsletter editor. Other commitments Permitting, she is workingon a biography of Eris O'Brien. The ideas expressed in some of this Articl are a reworking of a paper 'Eris O'Brien: the Foundation of a Historian' in Australasian Catholic Record, Vol. LXX, January 1993.
